Robert Walter, Ph.D.http://www.rwalter.de
Research Engineer and HCI ResearcherTue, 10 Apr 2018 06:30:47 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.9Demo at InnoTrans 2016http://www.rwalter.de/demo-at-innotrans-2016/
Fri, 23 Sep 2016 13:18:32 +0000http://www.rwalter.de/?p=728In the framework of InnoTrans 2016, the world’s largest trade fair focused on the rail transport industry, we presented some of our recent work at Siemens on the “Digital Train” exhibit.
]]>DIY Quadcopterhttp://www.rwalter.de/diy-quadcopter/
Wed, 25 May 2016 14:25:39 +0000http://www.rwalter.de/?p=754The motivation for this project was to build a minimalist quadcopter platform to carry a smartphone up in the air. The smartphone can not just capture videos of the flight, but could also be connected to the flight controller and become a cheap, powerful and accessible platform for autonomous drone projects. Despite offering a long-range remote connection to the drone through mobile internet, modern smartphones come with a range of sensors (such as GPS), decent processing power and access to many useful libraries (OpenCV, TensorFlow, etc).

When I started the project in 2015, I could not find a suitable frame that was specifically designed to carry a smartphone, so I designed one by myself. I used one end of a selfie-stick as mount for the phone. Based on that, I made several design iterations and experimented with different materials. The goal was to create a lightweight, disposable frame that can easily be lasercut.

Early Design Iteration

Since our research group was working a lot with acrylic for their fabrication projects and we had lots of that stuff laying around, I decided to give it a try and made a first prototype from clear acrylic. However, this turned out to be a very bad idea, as acrylic is quite heavy and brittle. The first cracks in the frame already appeared after a few flights. Though it looks very cool, I can not recommend acrylic as a frame material!

Frame being cut with the laser cutter.

Mounted drone (here: with a GoPro camera instead of a phone)

Improved Design

As acrylic did not turn out to be a good choice, I decided to try poplar. It’s a common material for tinkerers which is very light and cheap. I also narrowed the arms and reinforced them using perpendicular slabs that also function as stands. The overall weight of the body reduced from 280g to 77g. Material costs (assuming you have access to a laser cutter) add up to around 5 EUR. The whole quad takes around 1 hour to assemble.

Feel free to download the following laser cut pattern. The small square at the upper left corner servers as a 10mm x 10mm reference.

Here is a video that I recorded in Treptower Park, Berlin:

The current design is still far from perfect! It tends to break directly behind the motors and at the stands after tough landings. Some potential points of improvement:
– shorten arms (250 mm diagonal)
– extend stands further outwards to support the motor
– round stands
– improve clamb/glue friendliness
– abandon selfie mount and simply attach it with a piece of rubber
– wider center ring

If you are interested to experiment with the design by yourself, you can download the current version as a FreeCAD model.

]]>CHI ’16 Honorable Mention Awardhttp://www.rwalter.de/chi-16-honorable-mention-award/
Tue, 10 May 2016 14:48:55 +0000http://www.rwalter.de/?p=717Together with David Lindlbauer, Klemen Lilija and Jörg Müller, we received an Honorable Mention Award at CHI ’16 for our paper Influence of Display Transparency on Background Awareness and Task Performance. Awesome work, everybody!
]]>PhD Thesis submittedhttp://www.rwalter.de/phd-thesis-submitted/
Wed, 09 Dec 2015 14:10:39 +0000http://www.rwalter.de/?p=679After a little more than four years of working and publishing on my topic, I submitted my PhD thesis on Whole Body Interaction with Public Displays today!
]]>UIST ’15 Honorable Mention Awardhttp://www.rwalter.de/uist15-honorable-mention-award/
Tue, 10 Nov 2015 12:37:28 +0000http://www.rwalter.de/?p=606Together with Viktor Miruchna, David Lindlbauer, Jörg Müller, Maren Lehmann and Regine von Klitzing, we received an Honorable Mention Award at UIST ’15 for our paper GelTouch: Localized Tactile Feedback Through Thin, Programmable Gel. Congratulations, you guys!
]]>Project HoboLenshttp://www.rwalter.de/hobolens/
Mon, 26 Oct 2015 18:38:57 +0000http://www.rwalter.de/?p=602Current Augmented Reality headsets and (Head-mounted displays) HMDs like the Microsoft HoloLens and Meta 2 are still very expensive and inaccessible. Together with Marc and Michelle, we present a simple approach to allow everyone who owns a mobile phone to experiment with basic AR features. It exploits the ancient Pepper’s Ghost illusion technique, where objects or persons are projected into a stage or a scene, using a semi transparent reflector (e.g a glass plate). In our case, these objects are digitally rendered via the phone’s display and directly mapped into the field of view of the user. The inertial sensors of the phone are used to track head movements.

]]>Visit at SEGA R&Dhttp://www.rwalter.de/visit-at-sega/
Mon, 14 Sep 2015 21:00:48 +0000http://www.rwalter.de/?p=574Today, I had a really awesome time with the guys from SEGA R&D! First stop was Tokyo Joypolis, which is an amazing place! It exhibits the latest and most crazy arcade creations of SEGA. Everything there is fun and interactive – even the indoor roller coaster! There is lots of stuff to discover and to play around with. After Joypolis we went to their offices in Yokohama, where I presented our latest research projects and had a chat with the guys. They also gave me a sneak preview of some of their current projects. Amazing stuff! We finished the day with a nice seafood dinner and some sake.

Thank you SEGA, I had a great time!

]]>Talk at UbiComp ’15http://www.rwalter.de/talk-at-ubicomp-2015/
Fri, 11 Sep 2015 12:10:24 +0000http://www.rwalter.de/?p=572I presented our note Analyzing Visual Attention During Whole Body Interaction with Public Displays at UbiComp today in the Public Displays session. I had a really hard time to concentrate during the talk, since we went to Karaoke until 4:00 in the morning the night before. I regret nothing!
]]>Attending Doctoral Consortium at CHI ’15http://www.rwalter.de/attending-doctoral-consortium-at-chi15/
Sat, 18 Apr 2015 16:00:09 +0000http://www.rwalter.de/?p=512Today, I attended the Doctoral Consortium at CHI’15 in Seoul. It was a great opportunity to get feedback on my thesis work from important HCI people.
]]>DIY Arcade Cabinethttp://www.rwalter.de/diy-arcade-cabinet/
Fri, 09 Jan 2015 09:06:52 +0000http://www.rwalter.de/?p=744Since I have a passion for retro-gaming, I decided to build my own arcade cabinet! It’s based on RetroPi. the SketchUp model file can be found here.